did the fifth floor. >> we gave you an organizational chart showing where the new positions were going. the reason being, what is happening in engineering right now, we have a lot of vacancies the need to fill, and we're filling them this year, and it will balance out. by the end of the fiscal year, we are allowed to replace positions that we about to replace. it will balance out, because most of the engineers, the projects that are coming into the fifth floor, some of them do not require that the engineer to be on the fifth floor. so there is a very mixed on the fifth floor, which right now there are more inspectors and engineers, but, who oversees the fifth floor, brings engineers into the over-the-counter

process as needed, but most of the engineers to the plan check on the second-floor. >> i understand that. but then we're pulling people from the second floor to the fifth floor, which means something is not getting done on the second floor. >> i understand commissioner lee's concern. fifth floor is the shining star for dbi. it has been incredibly successful since it was implemented that is what just minimal staff. they have been understaffed all the time. every indicator that i see, especially in san francisco, is construction is going to increase the level, which means the floor will have to deal with twice the amount of stakeholders.

so also what frank is worried about is the money is not in the budget. can we come back six months from now and say we need 10 more people on the fifth floor, and will we get them? four or if there is a different regime running the department -- or if there is a different regime running the department, will they say you approved of this? we do not want that to happen. >> we're looking at the inspection services in terms of new positions, 6.37. and permit services -- services we added 6.5. there are roughly even going to each of those divisions. i focused on the fifth floor because i thought that was the concern based on last time. there is an opportunity to do that during the fiscal year.

and what you do is to a supplemental. what we have to do is get the mayor's office concurrence by saying if we have additional revenues that will continue to come in, we can request positions, and there is probably a favorable view on the board of supervisors based on the fact that we would be not necessarily conservative, but we were being cautious and adding positions now, and we would want to go forward and add additional positions. that is always available. it is not easy, but it can be done. if we can get the concurrence of the mayor's office, it goes through quickly.

commissioner murphy: i like the word being cautious. i think we've been really cautious on the fifth floor. i've been talking about understaffed on the fifth floor. they said they get permits through over there. this is the time we should be talking about it, and we are talking about it. you guys have put this in the budget? if people. until someone starts telling me they have a turnaround of 30 minutes when i go up to cash my check, you are not going to hear me talking about it anymore, right now we're still hearing that. and is now the time to deal with it, not six months from now? we've been asking for cashier's for two years and have never been able to get them. plan checkers?

i hear complaints there are not enough plan checkers. mechanical engineers. there was a memo that we should mention that stuff here, and that is great, and i am delighted with that, but i think we can do better. that is what we are saying. >> we have requisitions out now for clerks that have been out now before siw since before thanksgivings. we put the requisitions in. i know the mayor's office understands our extreme insistence we get these approved and are approved at the level we put them in. we are once again trying to get -- trying to continue to get this through. the problem now is two-fold.

one full this we a ticket approval from department of human resources, and the second is a more serious reason, which is some strange reason they continue to hold up the results of the tests that were done for the 1408's. as of yesterday i got a memo from one of my employees saying he was told there is still some delay on the testing. once we get those and add new ones come that we will end up having 17 clerks, which should move things forward. is it enough? i think right now we actually do not know because we never had that money on the flooany on th.

we can put it on the comptroller's reserve or something so we can say we want to make sure funding is available in order to go forward with the positions or port more positions in the budget and see what happens. we have a 2% -- we are projecting a 2% increase in revenues. i would be a little uncomfortable taking that up to three. maybe we can take it up to 2.5 and fund positions. commissioner murphy: i am sure the way you do things of there is to sit down and examine plumbing and permit services and ask them what their wish list is for the next year. i am sure you have done that with electrical and plumbing. have you done that with the

people on the fifth floor/ ? that is directed at the director. >> yes, the executive team does come in, and it except the actiy director did come in and put in his wish list. on that list there were no engineers. i am the one that added the engineers for the positions that were asked for right now, and i added an engineer to technical services as you see. the problem is right now with the list on the engineers that they have to go through another testing because they expired the previous list, and we have requisitions and four engineers that are not filled. they cannot be filled until the interview and it passed by -- until they are approved by the

mayor's budget. but we will be filling positions in the engineering department this year, and then we are adding it next year. so we do have the right to come back for a supplemental in january if we want to, or we can put -- we can add money to the budget and ask for more decisions if you think we're being too conservative on the estimates of the revenue, but it has to balance. if we add more engineers, we will have to add more revenue. and commissione commissioner murphy: what would be the backup plan if we get a jump in permits? >> we have added temporary salaries, and that is where we would bring in temporary people. we have added quite a lot into temporary salaries.

rather than premium full-time positions, so if the economy does skip again, we can lead the temperatures go and keep permanent staff. that is the problem we had before, we had so many permanent staff, that we had to let permanent staff go. our last inspector off the list is coming back on monday from all of the people we have let go. we also have people in other departments that want to come back to work for dbi, and we're looking to bring them back, and they are already fully trained. we're doing things behind the scenes that you will not see until the end of the fiscal year, until we get the positions approved. we had six clerks on hold now better for the fifth floor, and they will be trained on the first floor before they go up to the fifth floor, so it will be fully staffed at all times. the other part of the problem

is our current consider system takes almost 25 minutes to issue one permits with all of the things they have to go through in the current permit system. it is not just going up and handing someone at check. they have to figure out fees on the permits and that appear again electrical and plumbing permits are little bit faster, and we did at a clerk to help with those. those are going very well. it is the other permits that have to wait until the end of it to see if they need impact fees or other fees. that is what the court is doing. -- what the clerk is doing. the fees are not secured until the end of the permit process, and that is where it is taking time to hold up. and to get your permit issued, it is not the plan check time, it is more on the permit issuance side because of all of the things the clerk has to

enter into the computer system that is manual now that could be on the tape -- automated. i think we have all been concerned about stopping and how quickly we could bring on staff. i think what we have to be clear about is we have had a lot of permanent positions opened and improved -- approved, but we cannot bring them on because servals ocivil service has been slow and human resources has been inadequate in terms of testing and having a good pool of people we can regulate coal from. i think it the department can be more aggressive, i think we can. i think regarding human resources, we can say we have permanent positions. we would always rather hire

full-time positions. if you will not let us fill the positions because you're not up to date, then let us bring back more prop f people and more temporary people. i do not think the answer budget-wise is to add more positions we cannot fill, because other city departments are gridlocked. >what i would like to do is fill every single open division. and if we do not have enough, then let's ask for more? right now clearly we have too many vacancies. i think we can be more aggressive, but it is not a budgetary problem to me. they have been approved by the mayor's office. human-resources cannot move on it. they did not give us list. why is that? that is where it -- i understand

the frustration, but part of thie part of the city. commissioner lee: i am not all that sure of what we can do, but i am thinking if we were a private business and have a lack of employees for staff, i would think i would hire the highest position person first, and they would have the knowledge and skills to be flexible and do more job efficiencies/ . let them do clerking work and inspections. they are qualified to do time check or something like that. i am confused on why we're focusing on the clerk's and not trying to get back to the engineers. >> we have the engineers

positions with the clerks. we are asking to fill every vacant engineering position. we just had someone retire in a 52-14 position. we're asking to fill that position. we want more positions, but the 52-41 list, the engineers that do the plan check is the list under concern, because the previous list that we did have approved requisitions for, the people will not -- were not suitable to the hapacting the deputy's list. now we have a new list. we have exhausted all of the engineers we let go before, so actually we are getting more

engineers then we have in the past. we will be filling the 52-14 vacancy. we have asked for that, and i have asked for every 52-41 requisition that i have for this year. we're not leaving the engineers positions vacant for attrition. we're leaving other positions vacant. you have to realize i have to leave at least 25 positions vacant for attrition. that is just something the comptroller's office or board of supervisors does -- excuse me, personnel list, they will take and say you have so many positions and they have to keep this many positions vacant. the will have to take the money out that we programmed in. commissioner walker: i tend to

concur with commissioner mar that we clearly have open positions aimed at most of the opinions expressed by most of the other commissioners. i think rather than adding to something that we are unaware of whether we really need at this point, our focus should be on pressuring the other departments, maybe through the mayor's office. i see the mayor's representative here. to actually free up those positions. i think that sending a message along with the budget that we are continuing to have problems delivering the service needed to run our department if they continue to leave these positions unfilled will result in us adding more positions that may or may not be needed. that is not really how you want to budget. i think that these are all appropriate concerns, but i do think we need to aim them at the

open positions and really trying to get us some help in making sure we run the department right. >> i like what commissioner mar said, giving us a little insight on the human rights and all of the other stuff, but, you know, we -- commissioner walker talks about putting pressure on the mayor's office to get people from other departments -- i mean, we do not need anybody from -- we do not need any gardeners over here at our apartment. we need people that are qualified to work at dbi, and there is a process for that. i do not think we have done a good enough job internally in taking care of the stakeholders, the people that write the checks, the people back keep this department -- the people that pay your salary. i just do not think we have done

a good enough job there. talk about inspectors in the field being busy -- if you do not have the permits approved, the inspectors in the field are not going to be busy. it all starts back essentially on the fifth floor, and that is what we're talking about today. it is great we are having this conversation. it is open, letting everybody know what we want here. commissioner lee: back to that, let's see if we can identify how many building inspector, electrical inspector, and plumbing inspectors will actually be helping out on the fifth floor. >> if you look at page 16 and 17 of the budget, the original, we are going to have one plumbing inspector on the fifth floor. we're going to have one -- well,

that is -- i'm sorry? and then there is one of electrical that is going to be on the fifth floor. commissioner lee: these all say "for field inspection." >> there is an -- the -- there's an error in terms of one of those electrical inspectors online 3. that should have said the fifth floor. we apologize for that. commissioner lee: how about we

get this corrected and then let us review it again? commissioner hechanova: commissioners, additional comments? >> there is a change in the overtime for building inspection. is that related to this discussion, or is this related to the outreach programs? >> it is related to this subject, but basically, if we cannot fulfil the planchette, we have some of them on over time, so you want to make sure. that is also the case when we have inspections that, like, for the high-rises, a lot of the

inspections have to be done off hours. that will help cover -- you know, covered by over time. essentially, the way it works is that the budget comes in. it is managed at the level of salary, so we have budgeted over time, but if we do not use that and we actually are able to higher positions and do not need to have the overtime, the money is still there for that, it is a little bit fungible. >> the other question i had was -- >> one more comment before you pause it. >> sorry, there is one other thing pointed out. the budget reflects a 4.6% increase in salary because at this point in time, we have open contracts with the unions and the furlough days are supposed to expire, so when they expire,

it jumps the salaries up, so some of the incremental is because of that. >> my other question is -- how is it that we are retiring cars at 22,000 miles and 39,000 miles? where are these cars being driven? >> the reason the mileage is low is because these are used by the inspectors. all the inspectors have a car, and they go between short areas because they are located in districts. the problem we are having with our vehicles is one, they are old. two, central shops cannot fix a lot of our cars, the mileage does not mean that much. it is more the fact that some of the cars are not being fixed right because they do not have enough staff or there is something -- it is like having a bad card. eventually, you want to get rid of it. and even though we have the low

mileage, we are not the easiest on our cars. police are the hardest on their cars, but we are not, you know -- it is not like treating your car the way you do your own personal car. we chose these by -- we went to the divisions and asked about the worst cars they had, said the criteria was -- so the criteria was age and mileage, but there were also criteria of whether the cars were operable, they have a lot of problems, you send it to the shop and it comes back broken so we have to send it back. that sort of thing. commissioner murphy: you are saying a 5-year-old car might have only 9,000 miles on it? >> a 5-year-old car might have lower miles on it, then you as an individual might want to have to replace it, but given that

the maintenance on them is -- it is difficult management of maintenance, and they agree that they are having problems fulfilling everybody's need for maintenance. i mean, we have engines blowup. cars that are not very old, we have had engines blow up. >> in the department we went to and talked about our plan to buy new cars, and they were satisfied with our selection, where they the same ones who advise us on buying these, do you know? probably before your time, but it they are lemons -- the priuses should be more reliable. i do not know that the chevy, but anyway, a lot of money. >> the city has a list of approved cars. the department selects the cars they want. they get approved.

but to the extent that you would call it approval that those are the right cars to buy, it is more -- they look at it more now than they used to in years past, and, there is the green, clean air, all that, so we get even more scrutiny than we have in the past. we came to a consensus, which had to happen prior to the mayor's office agreeing to build the budget. they always question us on why we are not using these -- you know, a longer time, but we have explained that our need for the vehicles makes it low mileage but reliable cars. commissioner hechanova: commissioners? commissioner mar: -- commissioner murphy: just one more thing. in fairness, our director tweaks

this budget, and she was -- i believe she is definitely on the right track as far as some of the changes she is talking about making, and i appreciate that. i just want to say that. >> thank you. commissioner hechanova: commissioners? >> let me add my comment also before we put it to action. the category being that we are trying to propose this year's budget, but also, coincident with that is for the second year, given one, operating and one being a project that will be adjustable relative to what we will perform this year. dbi as an enterprise department has also the category by which we are kind of lagging if we do not have the personnel or at least the budget in place

necessary to address the issues relative to categories that we could almost fill those vacancies by virtue of what is the pool of technical talent that will not only need now, but also a pool that basically is being impeded by the ability to hire and bring them on. effectively staff to meet the current needs. and if we are a year away from getting these people on board, we are at risk for not only this coming year, the balance of this coming year, but for -- but the categories that we seem to be trying to play catch-up when we almost have to be ahead of the curve, by virtue of the least financially and monetarily burying the budget as opposed to trying to go back there to ask.

and so, the economic impact here is where we are trying to process the permits in the most efficient way by having personnel there because that really has the ripple effect by bringing on board sooner instead of trying to play catch up on the economic side of both construction jobs and the ripple effect associated with that. so it seems like we need more adjustment in the category of information on the material content and some of the strong concerns here by all the commissioners are really a reflection that maybe there is